One Grid. Every Decision.

Otl Aicher designed the visual identity for the 1972 Munich Olympics — arguably the first truly complete design system at scale. Pictograms, wayfinding, printed materials: every element derived from a single modular grid.

The grid was not a starting point. It was the DNA. The pictograms were built on it — human figures reduced to lines and circles constrained to a strict cell system. The typeface was chosen because its proportions worked within the system. Nothing was an exception.

Aicher showed that a grid can do more than organise a page. It can generate an entire visual language, consistent at every scale.